Drafted by NHL, Whitehouse Station resident Beattie opts to play hockey for Yale

One of the primary reasons Matt Beattie decided to travel to Pittsburgh to witness the National Hockey League draft himself was the very real possibility he might hear the following name being announced:

“. . . MATT BEATTIE.”

However, the likelihood of that happening appeared to shrivel with each passing round on that June day.

Four . . . five . . . six . . .

Whitehouse StationâÂÂs Matt Beattie, here maneuvering the puck against defenders while playing for Exeter Academy last winter, was taken in the seventh round by the Vancouver Canucks, becoming the first non-Canadian ever drafted by the NHL squad. (Photo courtesy of Ted Keating)

“We were all getting pretty nervous, and I’d already gotten the talk about how it’s not a bad thing to be a free agent and getting to sign with a team after college,” said Beattie. “And right after that, I got the call.”

Becoming the first Hunterdon County native to be selected in the NHL draft, Beattie was taken in the seventh round as the 207th overall pick by the Vancouver Canucks.

“People I know expected me to get drafted, and I was hoping to be taken somewhere around the fifth round,” said Beattie, a Whitehouse Station resident and former standout at the Pingry School and New Hampshire’s Phillips Exeter Academy. “But weird things happen in the draft. Names get skipped over and passed on, especially in the later rounds. So when it got into the seventh round, I figured my name had been passed on.”

And then, Vancouver nabbed a non-Canadian for the first time, snatching up the talented 6-foot-3, 188-pound left winger, who’d followed up an outstanding high school career with a scintillating post-graduate season at Exeter.

“The reaction was a lot of elation and a lot of relief,” said Beattie.

It was just a bit startling to Dana Barbin, his head coach at Exeter Academy.

“Frankly, I thought he’d be drafted higher,” said Barbin. “When he came here I felt he could be a great offensive player, and he was. And then during the course of the year we had increasing interest from NHL teams, asking me questions and interviewing him.”

One of the squads that seemed most interested in him was the Montreal Canadiens. But they bypassed Beattie and didn’t even have a seventh-round pick.

“I thought I’d get drafted by them,” said Beattie. “Then, after the sixth round, I figured this just isn’t really going to happen.”

As a late-round choice, Beattie also knew that while the honor of being drafted by the NHL is immense, his more immediate future will be based in New Haven, Conn., when he enters Yale University as a freshman this fall. And attending that esteemed Ivy League institution while also playing top-level collegiate hockey isn’t too bad of a consolation prize.

“I don’t think I would’ve been signing with anyone,” he said. “Especially as a late pick, no one would be expecting me to be playing as a pro any time soon. But I’m really, really excited to be going to Yale. This is an opportunity I can’t pass up on.”

A math wiz who was also heavily-recruited by Princeton and Harvard, Beattie opted for Yale. He’ll be joining a Bulldogs squad that encountered some choppy ice this past winter, finishing with a 16-16-3 record and getting fore-checked out of the Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference playoffs in the quarterfinals by bitter rival Harvard.

The Bulldogs are hoping for a quick return to the prominence they’d attained in recent prior seasons. In 2010-11 they topped the NCAA Division 1 rankings for an extended stretch of time, a rarity for an Ivy school. They won the ECAC title, reached the NCAA Regional final for the second year in a row and posted a 28-7-1 ledger. Yale has piled up 89 victories in the past four campaigns.

“All the coaches at all the schools were great,” he said, “but it just seemed at Yale they’re going to help me improve the most, and that’s all I’m trying to do.”

That was also a considerable motivating factor when Beattie — with the support of his father, John, and mother, Olga — decided it might be a good idea to attend Exeter after he’d enjoyed a superb stint at Pingry in Bernards Township. There, he totaled 100 goals and 230 points in 100 games and collected a bevy of all-star accolades.

But he had no Division 1 scholarship offers and only heard from a few Division 3 schools. Plus, a couple of former Pingry hockey stars he’s friends with — brothers Brian and Dan Weiniger of Warren — had also taken the Exeter route out of high school with great success.

“So I figured going to Exeter couldn’t hurt,” he said.

Not at all, as it turned out.

Manning the left wing position for the first time while skating for the Granite State power, Beattie was a dominant performer. He topped all New England prep players in scoring with 73 points on 39 goals and 34 assists in 28 games, just falling short of the school record for goals (42) set a few years earlier by Dan Weiniger, who’ll be a senior captain at Bowdoin this winter. He also was named Exeter’s “Most Valuable Player.”

“In my 25 years here, no one has come in for one year and done it better,” said Barbin. “His skating is outstanding and explosive and he has darned good hands, too. Matt loves to practice, play and enjoy the game with his teammates.

“I’m probably a little biased after a guy comes in and has a year like that . . . but anything he does at Yale won’t surprise me. The sky is the limit. He’s 6-3 and can skate like the wind. Beyond that, he’s a terrific kid in every way, with just how he went about his business on campus and applied himself diligently in the classroom. Teachers thought the world of him here and so did I.”

Shifting out to the wing also turned into a smart move by Beattie, who played center at Pingry and defense with some club teams.

He and Exeter teammate Matt Rubinoff alternated at center during a fall league but when they got together for the prep school campaign, Rubinoff took over in the middle and Beattie was at left wing.

“I just did a lot better at wing and he was better at center, and we stayed that way,” said Beattie. “The season went really well, and I had a good center, which is always huge. Going from Pingry to Exeter was a pretty smooth transition for me in all aspects — living away from home, the school, and the hockey. I feel I was fortunate.”

Once the season got under way, however, right wing Brian Hart was the player attracting NHL scouts to the Exeter campus. He was drafted in the second round by the Tampa Bay Lightning and also chose to pursue an Ivy education as he’ll be attending Harvard.

But gradually the scouts also started paying some attention to Beattie, noting his skating ability, speed, penchant for digging pucks out of the corners and creative command on the ice.

“There were scouts at every game watching Hart,” said Beattie, “and I guess I also did pretty well and they noticed that. But it took a while. I don’t think I realized the pros were within reach until the end of the season. After the season, I talked to a few teams but I was still ambiguous about it all.”

To be sure, Beattie is fully aware he still has some work to do if the NHL comes calling again. He needs to amp up the velocity on his shot besides adding some heft and muscle to his frame.

“When I get to Yale they’ll be working with me on putting on some weight,” said Beattie, who’ll concentrate on engineering and business studies. “That will be a process and I’ll know more when I get to school.”

He’s spending most of the summer near home, often working out at Aspen Ice in Raritan Township and playing in a few tournaments, like the one in Boston this weekend with the East Coast Militia.

He’s come a long way since he began playing the sport outdoors as a 4-year-old at the Essex Hunt Club in Peapack. His father played in a men’s league there and it was only natural he’d follow in his footsteps.

“I was always there, there was ice, and I just always liked it,” he said.

He also played for the New Jersey Rockets — now based at the NHL New Jersey Devils’ Prudential Center home arena in Newark — and for the Jersey Renegades out of Aspen Ice for two seasons, from 2009-11.

And don’t forget his true “home rink” as well.

“I also played a lot of stick hockey in the kitchen,” he said. “And then that got renovated, and that was done.”

But the career on ice is still going very much in the right direction.